Why a New Years resolution is a waste of time!
New years resolutions - we all make them, and 23% of us will fail them by the end of the week, 43% of us will fail by the end of January and 90% of us will not complete our resolution.
Why is this? Because we set stupid targets that we can not maintain and ultimately give up on, leaving us feeling shit and wondering what was the point.
Especially with health and fitness people tend to set unrealisitic goals, the problem is we are very motivated when writing them down but your health and fitness requires more than just motivation. We need accountability and determination to reach our goal, when you wake up at 5am to go to the gym or for your run and it is freezing cold, your motivation isn’t going to get you through it. It is your determination that is going to get you through it, the fact that you are holding yourself accountable is going to get you through it.
This is why people hire personal trainers, join class based gyms that they can book on in advance. At FBC, my personal training clients and online clients, I always get them to put in their diaries the days they are going to exercise and we fill it out for the month ahead. This way when they wake up and their motivation isn’t quite there, it is the accountability that gets them up and to do their workout. The fact that I am going to be on them that day to ask how the workout went or why they didn’t do it, the fact they have to admit to someone else they ‘failed’ is enough accountability to keep them on track.
When setting your resolution it is imperative that you make them individualised to you, if you haven’t done any exercise in december there is no point in saying you are going to go to the gym 6 days per week in january. If you haven’t ran before there is no point saying you are going to run 6 mornings per week. You are setting yourself up for failure.
Set yourself smaller more achievable targets, a good one I use for people who are relatively inactive is the old school monday, wednesday and friday you will do your gym session/class and on a saturday/sunday we will get out for a long walk/run/some form of ‘extra’ exercise. This way you know what days you have to do, it is always good to start with a monday and it sets you up for the week ahead.
New years resolutions are a great way to help kickstart your health and fitness journey, but only if the resolution is achievable for you and relevant to your lifestyle. Don’t just decide we are going balls to the wall, take into account family life, work life and where we are going to be able to fit in some exercise so we are able to balance all aspects of our life.
If you are unsure of what your resolution should look like don’t hesitate to drop me a message and we can work together to get your new years resolution sorted.